There are several “scoops” in this book, on subjects that would make good newspaper articles if written in sprightly English. Hemming’s flat, non-judgemental deadpan style spoils some surprising discoveries. Apparently nearly all the crop circles that appeared in Britain were the work of a team of hoaxers lead by one John Lundberg. Lundberg attends meetings of crop circle fanatics and listens to lectures on the extra-terrestrial or magical ‘origins’ of circles he had made himself. Like Tom the Cabin Boy, he smiles and says nothing.

Laureate John Betjeman’s grandson took drugs and is now confined in a mental home. Brian Haw, the man who annoys Parliament with his anti-war vigil, complete with handwritten posters on a traffic island opposite the Commons, proves to be both foul-mouthed and paranoid, abusing well-wishers as ‘government spies”. People like these lead Hemming to examine the lunacy laws. He decides that it is too easy to “section” outsiders and eccentrics who annoy the Powers That Be.

Towards the end of the book, Heming decides to bring on Creative Eccentrics who produce great works of art. Chief of these is a rock singer who insisted on kicking Hemming repeatedly in the back. This attack took place in a chauffeur-driven car on a motorway, and nearly led to a fatal accident.

Next day, safe at home, Hemming felt his bruises with awe and pride, a souvenir of a remarkable day. Summing up the experience, he writes: “I’m glad I met Pete Doherty when I did. In the way he moved, his peripatetic dreamy detachment, learning and wit, as well as his creativity, he was what I imagined a Thomas de Quincey figure to be”.

I closed the book with a feeling of deep depression. The England it depicts is a rainy country where everyone is going mad.